A few ideas for the Crossbow

[Aaron2]

How about you can make mighty crossbows, but for each bonus that the character does not have, it takes an extra ___ rounds or actions to work, and if you don't have the bonus you need a special wench.

I'm not 100% sure that taking extra time to reload is really a good balancing factor. A heavy crossbow, at 1 round to reload, takes a long time (relative to other things) already. Does it really make that much difference if the weapon takes 2 rounds versus 10 rounds? Either the firer has plenty of time to duck behind total cover or he drops it and uses another weapon. In both cases, the reloading time never comes up.


Aaron

Of course, I have my own pet system .....
http://www.freewebs.com/hedgehobbit/Crossbows.html

 

[Raduin711]

Hey,

It's pretty well established that Crossbows just don't make the grade against their Bow counterparts so I thought of some things to do to help them out and I thought who better to bounce them off of than the ENWorld crew.

1. Remove the AoO: It seems to me that drawing an arrow, nocking it in the bow, taking aim and then firing are all part of one standard action. It makes sense to me why this would draw an Attack of Opportunity in melee combat. The crossbow on the other hand, seems to have split up drawing and loading the bolt with aiming and firing into two different actions so why not say the loading causes an AoO (which I think it does anyway) but the actual firing does not (since it's just the quick pull of the trigger anyway).

2. Mighty Crossbows: Simillar to Mighty bows, the mighty crossbow allows a Str bonus to be applied to the damage. The kicker here is that it is not the Character's Str bonus, but a seperate Str bonus determined soley by the crossbow. So that if a character with a 10 str purchased a Mighty Crossbow +3, they would add 3 to the damage of each shot.

Just some quick and rough ideas and any feedback, from "I love it!" to "Your clearly insane!" would be appriciated.

J from Three Haligonians

Rapid Reload.

What you end up with is taking a weapon that is worse than a bow and making it better than one. I call it balanced.

 

[Three_Haligonians]

Rapid Reload.

What you end up with is taking a weapon that is worse than a bow and making it better than one. I call it balanced.

Well, Rapid Reload is nice but it only lets you make use of your full attack with light crossbows and it doesn't do anything for Str bonnus to damage with the crossbow (no matter what kind your using) so it still lacks a little.

As far as this Mighty Crossbow idea goes, what if light crossbows could only be made with a +1 or +2 bonus and heavy ones could be higher. You could rule that if the character's Str bonus is equal or greater to that of the crossbow then the loading time is the same. Otherwise if it is 1 or 2 less it increases by one step (although I'm not sure what one step up from a full-round action would be) and if the Str bonus was 3 or less, you couldn't use it at all.

J from Three Haligonians

 

[Raduin711]

You can also load the crossbow for standard attacks as well. After the feat a crossbow behaves just like a bow... Except for the strength bonus thing. PLUS the fact that a martial weapon proficiency is not required. I don't have my phb in front of me but I don't think it even requires a BAB bonus to take, unlike Exotic Weapon Proficiency. Crossbows seem to be geared more toward the semi-martial classes like rogues, or nonmartial classes like wizards.

 

[Gothmog]

I never liked the Rapid Reload feat- it just seemed completely unrealistic that someone could fire a crossbow 3 or 4 times in a round. Instead here is my homebrew rule for crossbows, which has been balanced in play, and makes crossbows fearsome again.

Crossbows and Iterative Attacks

Crossbows do not gain multiple shots per round. Instead, any iterative attacks the shooter has are lost with the crossbow. However, the shooter may make a single attack roll at his highest BAB, and if it hits, he inflicts a number of dice of crossbow damage equal to the number of attacks he would have received. For example, if a 13th level fighter attacked with a heavy crossbow, he would make a single attack roll at +13 (plus any applicable modifiers), and if he hit, inflict 3d10 damage with the shot.


I also really like Cyberzombie's idea of firing a loaded and readied crossbow as an immediate action- consider that yoinked!

 

[JimAde]

I never liked the Rapid Reload feat- it just seemed completely unrealistic that someone could fire a crossbow 3 or 4 times in a round. Instead here is my homebrew rule for crossbows, which has been balanced in play, and makes crossbows fearsome again.

Crossbows and Iterative Attacks

Crossbows do not gain multiple shots per round. Instead, any iterative attacks the shooter has are lost with the crossbow. However, the shooter may make a single attack roll at his highest BAB, and if it hits, he inflicts a number of dice of crossbow damage equal to the number of attacks he would have received. For example, if a 13th level fighter attacked with a heavy crossbow, he would make a single attack roll at +13 (plus any applicable modifiers), and if he hit, inflict 3d10 damage with the shot.


I also really like Cyberzombie's idea of firing a loaded and readied crossbow as an immediate action- consider that yoinked!

So any crossbow gives you the Manyshot feat for free. Except that there's no prerequisites, and no penalty to hit.

And you use less ammo.

All with a Simple weapon.

I can see your motivation with this, but it seems to make bows completely obsolete.

 

[Gothmog]

So any crossbow gives you the Manyshot feat for free. Except that there's no prerequisites, and no penalty to hit.

And you use less ammo.

All with a Simple weapon.

I can see your motivation with this, but it seems to make bows completely obsolete.

Hmm, you're right. I hadn't actually used the Manyshot feat in my campaign yet, and no PC has taken it. I don't plan on using that feat either, as it seems rather too over-the-top to me to allow for any sort of accuracy with the arrows.

However, in campaigns where Manyshot is allowed, I would still want the crossbow to be a precision weapon that fires only once per round at most, and hits harder for experienced users due to placement of the bolt. As it is now, the crossbow is a joke, and historically, even though it was simple to use and easier to train someone to use it than a bow, it was devastatingly lethal to rank and file troops as well as knights (much like a gun). In that case, I would require Weapon Focus with the crossbow to allow for the increased damage. Maybe the damage should be decreased for each of the "extra attacks" of the crossbow to allow for Manyshot to potentially do more damage due to the sheer volume of arrows. Something along the lines of +(die type/2) per extra iterative attack. So from the example above, the fighter would attack with +13 BAB, and do 1d10+10 + any magic for the bolt (15.5 damage average). While the same fighter with the Manyshot feat and a mighty composite longbow (16 Str) would attack at +9 BAB, and do 3d8+ Str mod for each arrow (9) + any magic for each arrow if he hit (22.5 damage average). Seems like a fair tradeoff to me- potentially higher damage with the bow at a loss in accuracy compared to the crossbow's lesser average damage but greater accuracy.

 

[JimAde]

I like the idea of extra damage for an experienced user. But giving the die type/2 is basically the same as rolling the die (only .5 less damage on average). How about +1 damage per iterative attack for hand crossbows, +2 for light and +3 for heavy?

 

[DaveStebbins]

If you don't think the crossbow is balanced as-is, how about increasing its threat range to 18-20/X2?

 

[Gothmog]

I like the idea of extra damage for an experienced user. But giving the die type/2 is basically the same as rolling the die (only .5 less damage on average). How about +1 damage per iterative attack for hand crossbows, +2 for light and +3 for heavy?

That would work too- it just depends on how lethal you want the crossbow to be. The other reason I chose die type/2 is so that its easier to scale the extra damage for crossbows that are larger or smaller than medium sized, and still reflect their power.